Re:High Prices Make Textbook ‘Piracy’ Acceptable to Most Stu...
by newsclues on Sunday June 04, 2023 @06:10PM
(#36190070)
It's complex, but it's that what governments exist for? Solving large complex problems for the greater good?
1) Totally agree, there needs to be competition and humility to say, "Hey our regions Math book is inferior, let's use X".
2) Absolutely and I don't mean to dismissively hand wave away the hard work that will be required ("just code the app" is a good comparison) but rather trying to simply state another direction to take.
It requires money, but I think less than many suspect (without the publishers margins!). But the investment would pay for itself and would be a good _start_ to tackling the inflated costs of education.
Re:High Prices Make Textbook ‘Piracy’ Acceptable to Most Stu...
by jimhefferon on Sunday June 04, 2023 @06:47PM
(#36190286)
I don't know if you are US, but at least here, I perceive it is against the current culture to do this. Love to be wrong, but I don't think so.
1) There is no best book for a subject. What suits a class in Elementary Statistics in one place or program might be all wrong for another.
2) There's a lot more to developing texts (or, as you say, curriculum) than people think. Besides a book, there are exercises and answers to the exercises. There are in class slides, perhaps programming components, and the elephant in the room is integration with the most popular LMSs. And all this has to be kept up to date.
It really requires money. At least in the US, I'm unaware of funding.
I'm an Open Text author so I'm sympathetic to your thoughts but it proves to be complex, IMHO